What’s the difference between Wentworth and Orange Is the New Black? The difference between gaol and jail? That is the short answer. Both of these shows are set in prisons/penitentiaries not gaols/jails, so strictly speaking, grammatical parochialism is not the issue. Ostensibly, these are both microcosms of society, arbitrarily taking place in a women’s correctional facility. Wentworth is set in Clayton, Victoria. Orange is set in upstate New York.
What’s the difference? Wentworth (Soho, Tuesday, 8.30pm) is steeped in the rich and nostalgic history of Prisoner, a show full of beautiful innocent women who, due to some terrible trick of fate or a lousy boyfriend, wind up in stir, with a lot of plain, ugly overweight lesbians in uniform. If that premise was good enough for the inhabitants of Cellblock H in 1979, it has proved an ideal template for the makers of Wentworth, more than 30 years later. Oddly enough, exactly the same recipe supplies the sour dough starter for the chewy and delicious loaf that is Orange Is the New Black (Showcase, Wednesday, 8.30pm).
Perhaps it is essential with dramas involving women’s prisons, for our heroine to be at least morally innocent, even if she finds herself separated from car keys, sunglasses and wallet on a technicality. Producers have decided that we won’t go along willingly for the ride if our head girl has been poisoning old people or kidnapping other people’s babies for no good reason.
The Shawshank Redemption model has been widely adopted (certainly Andy Dufresne was entirely innocent) but our women in dungarees are just a little more interesting if they are capable of passion and violence, under provocation.
The other constant in the genre is to track the decline of an ultimately good girl, betrayed by the system that forces her to turn really, really bad. We might call this the Breaking Bad model. None of the girls in these shows evolve into Walter White, but they certainly lose the facility to gather flowers in a meadow wearing a white sundress, pretty darn quick behind bars.
In this aspect, OITNB excels where Wentworth marks time. In each episode, we escape the drab claustrophobia of the cells by revisiting the backstory of another character. Sexuality, race and demographics may differ, but there is an inevitability in each woman’s trajectory that is heartbreakingly similar. We might identify more closely with Piper, jailed just moments before her line of scented candles launched in Barneys. But every prisoner’s story has an element of the “there-but-for-the-grace-of-God”. At these moments, OITNB isn’t a prison drama, but a moving and funny examination of alienation and disenfranchisement. Everybody needs to fit in and belong. Exclusion is a game they play in prison, it’s also often the reason they find themselves locked up in the first place. The shit that has started to bubble up though the bathroom floor drains is a horror show and a metaphor.
Ultimately, there’s a world of differences between Wentworth and OITNB. In spite of Australian content, I feel like I’m peering in to violent angry women to whom I cannot relate. All the local performances are good and every episode is packed with dramatic tension, but it simply doesn’t deliver for genuine pathos or humour. It must be almost impossible for producers to shoot for subtle meaning and nuance, but it’s easy to identify when you see it.
One of the characters in OITNB explains the difference between prison and jail this way: mum and dad don’t come and pick you up from prison.
